Santander (EFE).- The actor and theater director José Luis Gómez assured this Wednesday that “entering the Mio Cid is an unforgettable adventure”, both for the spectator and for him, who had the “crazy” idea of taking the settings for this medieval poem, for which he had to dedicate six months of his life to learning ancient Castilian.
“It’s something I don’t regret,” Gómez assured, at a press conference at the Menéndez Pelayo International University (UIMP) in Santander, the new scale of his theatrical project and where this Thursday he will receive the La Barraca Arts Award. performing.
Also a member of the Royal Spanish Academy, José Luis Gómez has stressed that My Cid is an “extraordinary poem” and the “first testimony” of the Spanish language, a “historical luck” for Spain having given birth by “chance of fate ” the second most spoken language in the world.
Old Castilian is “another language”
However, he has specified that ancient Castilian is “another language” whose fruit after “many simplifications” has been Spanish, which through its “long history” has become a language “relatively easy to learn as it is a very clear language.
On the contrary, Old Castilian, which he has defined as a “fascinating” language, offers an “extraordinary association of consonants and vowels” that he has compared to German, the language in which he studied interpretation during a period of his life.
“It has something very special”, Gómez has had an impact, who has recognized that when he puts himself in the place of the minstrel who narrates the poem and begins to interpret it in old Castilian, some spectators want to flee although they stay “out of bullfighter shame”.
But in the end, as he has assured, despite the initial “shock” and “surprise”, the attendees end up understanding the language of those “who preceded them”, through a theatrical project that he launched by “imposition”. of the Royal Academy, as “crazy” as founding the theater of La Abadía, which he does not regret either. “I never did anything better than that”, has sentenced José Luis Gómez.